Github now allows repository owners to delete an issue: curse or a boon?

On Saturday Github released the public beta version for a new feature to delete issues. This feature lets repository admins, delete an issue from any repository, permanently. This might give more power to the repository owners now.

Since the time Github tweeted about this news, the controversy around this feature seems to be on fire. According to many, this new feature might lead to the removal of issues that disclose severe security issues. Also, many users can take help of the closed issue and resolve their problems as the conversation history of repository sometimes has a lot of information.

I can’t tell you the countless times a closed issue has helped me out. It’s hard to estimate how the simplest or casual comment in some closed issue could makes someone’s day easier and now there’s a chance they could never find it. isn’t locking enough? 😔

I see why this was done, but it looks like the wrong way to fix the problem. Maintaining the full conversation history of a repo just goes along well with the philosophy of git, and this feature goes against this idea. A lot of information to be lost this way.

In case, someone posts a security vulnerability publicly as an issue, it might turn out to be a big problem to the project owner, as there’s a high possibility of people avoiding the future updates coming on the same project. This feature could be helpful to many organizations, as this feature might work as a damage control for them. Few of the issues posted by users on Github aren’t really issues, so this feature might be helpful in that direction. Also, there are a lot of duplicate issues which get posted on purpose or mistakenly by the users, so this feature could work a rescue tool!

In contrast to this, a lot of users are opposing this feature. This feature might not be so helpful because no matter how fast one erases a vulnerability report, the info gets leaked via the mail inbox. The poll posted by one of the users on Twitter which has 71 votes as of the time of writing, shows that 69% of the participants disliked this feature. While only 14% of users have given a thumbs up to this feature. And the rest 17% have no views on it. The poll is still on, it would be interesting to see the final report of the same.

I've haven't asked for this. Who is this 'You' that you speak of? I am not sure I like it.

The users are requesting for a better option which might just highlight a way to report security issues in a non-public way. While few others prefer an archive option instead of deleting the issue permanently. And some others just strongly favor removing the feature.

oh damn… I always hoped that is not going to happen… oh damn… @Microsoft why you trying to kill @github? now it possible to delete issues that can be important to resolve legal or license issues